Prestigious national scholarship awarded to MSJC student

Rebekah Tolopilo is one of only 60 students nationwide to receive the Jack Kent Cooke scholarship

Mt. San Jacinto College student Rebekah Tolopilo was selected from a pool of nearly 800 students to receive the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.

Rebekah, 22, of Temecula was one of 785 students from more than 100 community colleges around the nation to apply for the undergraduate transfer scholarship from the Virginia-based foundation. Only 60 students were selected to receive the award. The scholarship awards recipients with $30,000 a year to cover a student’s educational expenses, including tuition, living expenses, books and required fees, for the final two to three years necessary to achieve a bachelor’s degree.

“Rebekah truly embodies all of the qualities that we expect to see in our very best students: a motivated scholar, strong leader, and community volunteer,” said Christina Yamanaka, an Honors Enrichment Program coordinator and Phi Theta Kappa advisor. “She is deserving of this award and we are very proud of her.”

Rebekah is a member of the MSJC Honors Enrichment Program and Phi Theta Kappa. She has already been accepted to UC Irvine and UCLA and is waiting to hear from Stanford and New York University. She is pursuing a major in chemistry with a minor in biology to prepare for a career as a Physician’s Assistant.

In addition to her success at MSJC, Rebekah is active in her church. She has visited the Grace Children’s Home, an orphanage in Mexico, where she helped clean and paint the facilities and worked with orphaned children. In July 2010, Rebekah joined a volunteer medical team that went to Haiti for a week after the devastating earthquake. While there, she volunteered at a medical clinic that saw a wide variety of patients ranging from those who needed vitamins and nutrition, to those who needed minor surgeries and more complicated cases that were referred to local hospitals.

These experiences shaped Rebekah’s goal to help others through a career as a Physician’s Assistant.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is a non-profit organization that awards scholarships to youngsters, community college students and graduate students. The Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship Program was designed to help community college students with exceptional promise and demonstrated financial need make the transition to four-year colleges and universities, according to a foundation news release.